Page 11 of Grand Romantic Delusions and the Madness of Mirth, Part Two

B OLAN

Mirth abandons the backpack, pivots, plants one hand in the mud. Then she fucking springs to her feet and dashes into the woods as if she was born to run.

As if she was born to be chased.

By me.

The wolf slams into me in a desperate attempt to take over, to chase his mate, shoving me forward onto my hands. I’m already on my knees. And I plan to stay on my knees for as long as I need to be there, as long as I need to convince Mirth I’m willing to do whatever it takes to regain her trust.

I lose a few moments in a struggle to gain control of myself. I’m not entirely successful, because my fingers are suddenly tipped with wicked claws, and my incisors are cutting into my bottom lip. The wolf’s instincts, his desperate need, flood my mind.

Drug-free for the first time in years and with the wolf ascendant, I can smell Mirth. The combination of her anger, grief, and need is like a sledgehammer to my brain.

The wolf is convinced we can soothe everything for our mate.

But first she has to be ours, completely.

Not only claimed, but with that claim accepted, reciprocated.

I ease onto my feet, still warring with the instinct to run on all fours.

I can hear each of Mirth’s footfalls. Her little gasps and huffs as she inhales and exhales.

I yank off my sweater, then my boots and socks, wrestling the wolf further back instead of also removing my jeans. Then, setting out at a light jog, I follow Mirth deeper into the woods.

I find her long sweater-jacket abandoned about a minute later, snatching it up while still moving steadily after her.

I bring it to my nose to scent her. Mirth doesn’t wear perfume, she never has.

But there’s shea butter and jojoba in her skin cream, along with that indescribable but unmistakable scent that is just Mirth. And her essence.

My brain ever-so-helpfully flashes to watching Christoph delicately feed my Mirth slices of peach — to the memory of her bringing the peach to breakfast in the first place — like it was some sort of slow tease between them.

As if he weren’t the archduke of illegal bareknuckle fights well before his more recently acquired royal titles.

I wonder if that’s how the hulking bear shifter interprets the sweet tang in her scent. Ripe peach.

Mirth has changed direction. She dropped the sweater in an attempt to confuse me. But I don’t need eyes or ears or a sharp nose to find her. She thrums through my chest. She’s in my erratic heartbeat, which steadies the closer I get to her.

Deep within the birch trees and well out of view of the main house, Mirth’s breathing is ragged as she finally slows her pace to a walk, looking back over her shoulder for me.

But I’ve skirted around her, stalking her to satisfy the wolf …

just a little. Her shoulders stiffen, and she slowly pivots to scan the trees encircling her.

She can feel me.

I’ve always noted how I can get into her space without her noticing. How Sully could too. I thought it was just pure trust, but now I know for certain it’s something else.

Our souls were divided from the same section of the universe. Our destiny is to find and fortify each other on this plane of existence. Through every lifetime.

Whether or not I’m actually worthy of that.

Mirth stills, looking right at me now, though I know the shadows between the trees hide me from her sight.

She could reject me.

The chase, this chase, and the ultimatum could trigger her to fully reject me. And that would be the end of it. Because I’ve already damaged the bond between us. I can feel it all twisted in my chest. A rejection from Mirth will sever it completely.

“That’s it?” she asks softly. Then with a quiet, bitter laugh, she pivots sharply away, heading back toward the house.

That pained laugh knifes through my chest, so harshly that I stumble under the assault and have to stifle a moan.

On the edge of the moment, I’ve fucking hesitated. Again.

I always have to find the right thing to say. I always need more time to put the words together in a way that doesn’t just piss her off —

The wolf surges forward, taking advantage of my confused state to take me over completely. I stumble a few more steps under the internal onslaught. Then I throw my head back as a strangled, grief-filled howl rips through my entire self, my entire being, and out my throat.

My mate.

My mate is rejecting me.

The change from man to wolf floods through me, dangerous and abrupt. The pain is so incapacitating that all I can do is writhe on the muddy ground and endure it.

To my utter horror, when the wolf gains his feet, I’m no longer in full control. I’m shoved into the back of my own mind. The wolf is ascendant and so, so dangerously unchecked.

And Mirth. My darling, perfect Mirth, has run back to us. Run back at my howl. When she should have been fleeing in the opposite direction.

The wolf leaps, easily closing the distance between us and Mirth. He knocks her onto her back, then pins her down with a large paw spanned across her chest. No claws, but the wolf could crush her.

Mirth’s purple eyes widen as her concern transforms into panic.

Stop. Stop. Not like this , I scream in my own head.

The wolf doesn’t listen. I’ve denied him for too long, dampened his urges and instincts with a steady diet of mage-wrought drugs and alcohol.

He wants his mate. Even though that mate is one of the awry and not another shifter, he’s wanted her for even longer than I have— the self-deluded human half of our whole.

He looms over our mate, exerting dominance and baring his teeth. He slowly lowers his huge head. An unvoiced growl vibrates through his chest.

Mirth is too tiny like this, too vulnerable.

He’s going to bite her, and —

“Absolutely not,” she snaps, coldly fierce and utterly ticked off.

The wolf huffs. But he hesitates for just a moment. Listening. Because he likes Mirth like this — with the perfect-princess mask and the perfectly-in-control tone even while pinned to the ground with an abnormally large wolf salivating over her.

He likes it just as much as I do.

Mirth reaches up, wraps her hand around the wolf’s jaw, then clasps his mouth closed. She’s so petite compared to my beast that her hand spans only half of the wolf’s jaw and nose. But she still grips him firmly, then angles the wolf’s head so she can look him deliberately and directly in the eye.

Exactly everything you aren’t supposed to do with a wolf shifter.

“You want me, Bolan?” she says firmly, still acting as if she hasn’t even noticed the fucking huge beast pinning her to the ground. “You use your words. Or better yet, your fucking mouth. On mine. On me. No games. Just the truth of it all. Make a fucking choice.”

Then she addresses the wolf, and yes, there is a difference in her tone, in her intent, even though we’re the same being. “I haven’t given you permission to touch me.”

The wolf exhales in clear dispute. In his mind, he needs no more consent than what’s already been granted from the universe.

She narrows her eyes at him. “Either give the man back or go for a run.”

Utterly inexplicably, the wolf concedes, stepping to the side. A deep, ferociously pleased contentment sinks into me. The wolf likes our mate’s dominance. And … her acceptance? The wolf doesn’t feel rejected at all.

And that … all these years … was it the wolf who held my end of the bond, shredded but not broken? Because Mirth never outright rejected us. Only me, the human part of myself, tried to reject her. More specifically, to reject our bond.

I’m honestly not certain she ever knew what I was to her all those years ago … what I still am to her.

Mirth gets to her feet with a huff, brushing off her mud-soaked pants as if doing so will improve their condition in any way. Ignoring the wolf, she walks stiffly over to the pile of clothing I left behind when I transformed, and grabs her sweater.

The wolf abruptly retreats from my consciousness, from controlling our form. The transformation floods my limbs, my body, my mind, with utter agony. My spine snaps and reshapes itself until I find myself in control again.

Mirth keeps her back to me as I change, sliding her arms into her long sweater. But she glances over her shoulder, her dark lashes fanning against her cheek, when I’m finally crouched on human feet again, sweating and panting from the change.

She raises her chin. Her nostrils flare as she readies some poised and perfect retort. Some sure-to-be-ball-withering rejoinder already primed on her lips.

I straighten.

She blinks, taking me in. I’m completely nude, wearing nothing but the tattoos that scribe my arms and chest— and completely erect. Totally hard and ready to take up the challenge she issued. To use my fucking mouth on her if I can’t find the words that I need to say and she needs to hear.

Her lush lips part as I stalk toward her. Sharp sparks of the transformation from wolf to man still run across my skin. Whatever she was about to say dies on her tongue. Perhaps at the sight of my bobbing cock.

So I take that mouth, those lips, for myself.

Threading my fingers through her already mussed hair, I cradle her head in one hand and her hip in the other. I crush her against me. And I just fucking kiss her.

I kiss her like I should have kissed her in the fucking rowboat eleven years ago. Even if I’d never admitted it to myself before Mirth kissed me, I knew what I was doing, what I wanted, when I brought her out on the lake and played her that song.

I kiss her like I should have kissed her the next day, when I knew deep in my soul that I’d made an epically stupid mistake. But when I asked around, no one had any idea where she and Armin had gone. Or why they’d left school so abruptly.

I kiss her like I should have kissed her a thousand times between then and now.

I kiss her like I should have after Armin’s death.